


12 Minutes and 28 Seconds

by seamen_demon



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-05
Updated: 2004-08-05
Packaged: 2019-05-31 19:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seamen_demon/pseuds/seamen_demon
Summary: Sam takes Josh home.





	12 Minutes and 28 Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

Title: 12 Minutes and 28 Seconds

Character: Josh

Category: angst.

Pairing: Josh/Sam

Rating: YTEEN

Summary: Sam takes Josh home.

Author's Notes: This is my first story, for any feedback, which is greatly appreciated, subject it “feedback” since you have no idea the amount of AO-spam I get in a day. For my grandfather, who always let me have sips of his scotch.

His dad never had a grave. Noah had always said that graves were for the living, funerals were for the living, because when he was dead he was past caring what happened to his body afterwards. So it had been donated to science, to a university for docters in the making to study and learn from. The thought that kept Josh awake months after his father's death was the knowledge that some student, at this very moment, could be cutting into his father's chest. Past skin and bone and deep inside, poking at vital organs. It reminded him of biology class in highschool, the shriveled black lung of a decades long smoker laying on a cold slab in front of the class, most of the girls refusing to look and the guys transfixed in morbid fascination. That was his dad. A shriveled black lung of a decades long smoker laying on a slab in front of a class of impressionable youths.

Joaine, on the other hand, had a grave. He had never visited it much because he hated to think of what was left of her was six feet underneath his shoes. He remembered being 9 and visiting it for the first time, he remembered straining his ears for the sound of her voice, screaming down from below to let her out. That she wasn't really dead and they were killing her, they were giving up on her and she couldn't breathe. And he had clutched at his father's hand, terrified beyond voice, staring at the perfect patch of green grass and the marble headstone.

When his father died there was nothing left that he could hold in his hands, nothing that epitomized his father, nothing he could grasp and say " look? do you see this? this is dad. " There wasn't even a headstone or a patch of unmarred grass.

Sam's hand was warm and guiding at the small of his back and it made him dizy, lightheaded and on the edge of something, on the verge of tipping over and into what, he wasn't quite sure yet. But it could've been the beer thinking these things, it probably was, so he dismissed the thought and stared instead at Sam's profile, being lead blindly from the bar. He realized suddenly that Sam could be walking him over that cliff, over into that verge of something he didn't understand, but he would've still let Sam lead him.

"What's wrong with you?" It shook him from his moment of clarity to find himself standing in front of Sam's car, staring into Sam's amused and sparkling eyes, the accompanying quirk of the corner of his mouth. "You're staring at me like I grew a second head or something."

"You have a really pointed nose.” Josh replied with the sudden awe of a child. Sam never missed a beat, never even seemed taken off-guard by Josh's random drunkardness.

"You have a really big forehead."

It reminded him of his father again, of Joaine, of Christmas when the snow fell and he asked how long it took for a snowflake to fall and his father, never missing a beat either, had rattled off some figure off the top of his head. And he had believed it because the sun rose and set on his parents, they were his fountain of knowledge and if his Mom told him that if he kept making that face it'd get stuck like that, he'd believe her. And if a snowflake really took 12 minutes and 28 seconds to fall, if that was what his father said, he would believe that too. Joaine had laughed and called him naive but moments later she had a note of curiousity in her voice when she turned to ask their Dad if that was really true.

He didn't know at which point exactly he ended up in the passenger seat of Sam's car, the buildings passing leisurely by and making him even more dizy with the sudden impulse to turn his head really fast from side to side. When he was drunk that was his way of telling how drunk, if it took more than a few seconds for his eyes to catch up with his head than he was tipsy. If he couldn't complete the act without busting into laughter, he was full-blown drunk. He was sure now that he was somewhere inbetween because the thought of turning his head really fast from side to side didn't amuse him. He wished there was some sort of pill that could make him feel this way without side effects. Where he didn't have to wake up with an impossibly dry mouth or little men with hammers pounding away at the back of his eyelids, but then he guessed it was better there wasn't a pill like that. He remembered in some book he read, Brave New World, maybe, there had been a pill like that.

"Do you ever wish there was a pill you could take?" he was staring ahead now, at the windshield where Sam was reflected under the lights of the passing streetlamps. A ghost. One second he was there and the next he wasn't, fading in and out of existance, "Where you could feel this way but with like .. no consequences?"

"I think they call that crack, Josh. Possibly heroine, or LSD .. or marijuana."

"No." he interrupted impatiently, turning in the seat now and the seatbelt cutting tight across his chest. He didn't remember strapping himself in. Maybe Sam had done it. He watched Sam's profile for a second, eyes that stared intently ahead and decided, "You don't understand .." Only drunk people could understand this. Could understand this feeling, and Sam wasn't drunk, Sam was the designated driver, Sam who was the person who strapped him in the car seat and took him home when things got too complicated for him to handle.

"Josh" Sam's voice trailed off, undecided, lingering there in the air between them, "sometimes you say these things .. and it scares me." He didn't understand what he had said to strike fear into Sam. He started feeling less like Sam being the designated driver, Sam being the person who brought him home at night, was something to be proud of. His mood sank deeper and he stared not at the windshield anymore but through it into the oncoming carlights until it hurt his eyes, until they burnt and he had to fight the impulse to close them.

"I'm sorry, Sam." and he meant it. He didn't want to be Sam's burden anymore, didn't want his friend to always have to be the designated driver. He wanted Sam to be able to let go, too, and to know that Josh would take care of him. Josh would strap him into the car seat and take him home and help him into bed. "I'm just drunk." It was the perfectly crafted excuse. He had been aware that he was in the process of making it when he ordered the third beer. Because the things he said and thought and did now weren't the real Josh, they were the drunk Josh. He had learned to define them as different people. Drunk Josh felt things that the Real Josh tried not to allow himself to. Sometimes he wondered if Real Josh was even real afterall, if Drunk Josh was the real thing, the person he hid during the day, and he simply had the labels backwards.

He voiced these concerns to Sam on his way up the staircase of his apartment, the heat of the stairway smacking him in the face in sharp contrast to the frigid D.C air outside. "Do you think drunk people are really the real people?" It only occurred to him when Sam flashed him a bewildered look that Sam wouldn't understand the language he was using, he didn't know the theory of real Josh and drunk Josh as completely different people existing in the same body. "That drunk people are actually the person. Like it's just somebody they hide." They stood at Josh's doorway now and Sam was going through Josh's pockets, first his coat and then his jeans but it didn't seem to register to Josh yet, waiting expectantly for Sam's opinion on the matter.

"I think being drunk takes away your inhibitions."

But it wasn't the answer Josh was looking for. Disappointed, he trailed behind Sam into his apartment, glancing around as if they had stepped into some world that he suddenly didn't recognize but should.

"What's going on, Josh?" The question startled him and he turned to Sam, starting to peel off his jacket because the heat in his apartment was suffocating him, but he couldn't get a firm grip on the fabric and when he did he couldn't pull it down his own shoulders. Sam stepped in to help him take off his coat.

"I'm drunk." But Sam wasn't buying that excuse anymore and it struck Josh with a panic. If this couldn't be his excuse anymore, that what would be? At which point exactly did he have to have an excuse to be unhappy?

Sam, though disbelief and concern etched so clearly on his features, accepted this excuse quietly. "Okay," and the panic subsided in Josh.

Getting ready for bed was a blur, Sam devising him of his jacket and shoes and seemingly content to let Josh sleep in his shirt and jeans. But sitting on the edge of the bed and face-to-face with the buttons of Sam's shirt, he didn't want Sam to leave. Not yet. He wasn't tired enough, he thought, even though his eyes ached to drift shut and he should have enough energy to raise his head and meet Sam's eyes, only he didn't. So Sam crouched down, hands on Josh's thighs, and instead of meeting his gaze Josh only bowed his head further to stare at Sam's hands on his thighs.

"Hey .. this is me, okay? This is me." Like it was supposed to mean something, and it did. Sometimes Josh hated that it did. But right now he was too tired to deny the defeat in his shoulders, the quiet conviction in his voice when he whispered to Sam,

"I think I'd make a great uncle."

He hadn't realized that that was what it was until he said it. There were two defining moments in Josh's life, he realized, the moment he realized he had survived the fire and Joaine hadn't and the moment he realized he had survived the bullet, too. Maybe God had just forgotten about him.

"You would .." Sam agreed quietly, heartbrokenly, but he didn't know what else to say.

"I could be that cool uncle, you know? The one that cussed and let you have sips of their drink because you were curious." He had an uncle like that, Dale had been his name. He had a stroke and died when Josh had been 8. He remembered the tears in his father's voice, he remembered seeing his father cry for the first time and it terrified Josh. If his father could cry, if his father could break, then that meant Josh could break too.

His mother was the last family tie he had, and after that then the Lyman's would really be dead. Because deep down Josh knew he'd never have children and would thereby put an end to their line because there would be no one left. No uncles, or fathers, or mothers, or sisters, and they really couldn't depend on Josh to keep them alive. That much he had proven.

"Do you want me to stay?" Sam whispered with the silent plea that Josh would just look up at him, a plea Josh couldn't ignore, and he wanted to erase the concern and sadness from Sam's face where it should never be. He was shaken with the sudden impulse to lean forward and kiss Sam. I could love this man, he thought. But it was only a fleeting moment and the courage to do something so bold quickly passed.

He couldn't ask Sam to stay, "No." Sam was once again unconvinced and hesitated.

"I just wanna go to bed. " Josh elaborated quietly, tiredly, and he tried to maneuver up to the bed to do so, not bothering to slip underneath the covers tonight. He clutched the pillow under his head in his hand and let his eyes drift shut, feeling a hand on his shoulder a few moments later and a quiet whisper somewhere above him.

"Goodnight, Josh."

When the lights were gone and he heard the distinct close of the door, he stayed awake. He stared out the bedroom window in the dark as the snow started to fall outside and thought, it only took 12 minutes and 28 seconds for a snowflake to reach the ground.


End file.
